


Shattered Dreams and Broken Stele

by EssayOfThoughts



Series: Memento Mori [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-24
Updated: 2015-08-26
Packaged: 2018-04-17 02:34:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4648959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is hard to be, when half of you is gone. It is easier to be, when someone tries to understand.</p><p>--</p><p>This fic is part of a series, I recommend you read the first in the series, <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/4494030/chapters/10217535">The Dead Do Not Bury Themselves</a>, for full understanding.</p><p>Many thanks to <a href="http://indigoumbrella.tumblr.com/">Indigo Umbrella</a> for beta-ing this fic for me, and many thanks to <a href="/http://archiveofourown.org/users/TobermorianSass/">Jojo</a> and <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/">Niamh</a> for listening to me as I ranted and wrote interminably about the twins.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It is days upon days later when she is training and an agent comes in.

“Maximoff?” It is still startling to Wanda to be the only Maximoff, but she looks up. “There’s someone here, one of the kids from the carriers, he’s insisting, calls himself schnee--”

“Snowsmoke,” Wanda interrupts. “In English. You’d call him Snowsmoke.” She swings down from where she had climbed on the wall, unbuckles her harness and heads toward the door without even looking to the Widow or the Captain. Behind her she senses a brief conversation between Vision and the Widow, and the android’s mind following her.

“Miss Maximoff?”

She doesn’t turn, but does flick a hand in scarlet recognition.

“You know this boy?”

She turns her head back over her shoulder, glancing to where he is hovering along behind her, to match her rapid pace.

“From the streets. Pie--,” her throat still chokes to say his name, and she repeats herself. “Pietro used to give him cigarettes for information. I’d check on him otherwise, make sure the others didn’t start a witch hunt.”

There is curiosity in the android’s voice. “Do you think it is really him?”

Wanda nods, rather than speak. “It’s him. His name is Andrej. Only I called him Snowsmoke.”

They enter the room where Snowsmoke is, but do not see him before he has wrapped his arms around Wanda’s waist. S.H.I.E.L.D. agents draw their guns, Vision raises his hands, his gem glowing, and Wanda wraps her arms around the boy, and presses her face to pale hair.

He is mumbling something, barely audible, using Sokovian with a smattering of German. With his face pressed to Wanda’s breast she cannot make it out, and dips gently into his mind. _I heard, I heard, I heard, I saw his body, what happened, what happened?_

Tears fill Wanda’s eyes, and she holds Andrej closer, as the agents and Vision finally stand down. “He died,” she murmurs, and that is all she can get out before the tears fall, and soak the boy’s hair. Andrej’s head is shaking back and forth, still pressed to her, his arms still wrapped around her waist, and Wanda presses her face into his clean hair and lets her tears soak it.

 

* * *

 

At Vision’s request the agents withdraw, and at a nod from Wanda so too does he. Wanda sits with Andrej in the middle of the room, and watches the boy adjust to the idea that one of the anchors in his life is gone.

Conversation stops and starts, and with a flick of her fingers Wanda pulls up the cigarettes she’d stolen from an agent the day before, and tucked into her uniform. She passes one to Andrej, and lets the boy light it with skilled fingers. Silence reigns, and Wanda watches the snowstorm of his mind settle from blizzard to breeze.

She has tried to explain what the loss is before. When Natasha asked how she was she said, “I have lost half of who I am.” When Vision asked, she said, “It is as if your stone was taken from you.” When Thor stood in front of her and offered her his hand she cycled through every language she knew, and Thor simply said, “I know. There are not words for this loss.” She imagines that, if she tries, Snowsmoke might understand. To him, she would explain it as addiction, as what it was like when he had gone three days in winter with no food, no water, no cigarettes. That shaking agony and hunger and pain that does not want to die, and will not unless you make it so. She brushes the thoughts aside, and looks to Snowsmoke, sucking on a cigarette. Without a word, Wanda stands, and stretches a hand down to him. Andrej holds the cigarette between his teeth, and lets her pull him up.

“Would you like to see his grave?”

 

* * *

 

His grave is simple. The stone has his name and dates in the Roman alphabet and the Cyrillic, and nothing more. The mound is a soft curve, and the grass is already bright again. Andrej shrinks into Wanda’s side.

“How…?”

“Ultron. The robots. He was trying to help Hawkeye get a child out and--.” Wanda finds herself choked into sobs, but Andrej understands.

“Did you kill him?”

Wanda’s mouth drags into a wide mockery, even as tears roll down her cheeks. “I tore his heart from him.”

Andrej drops his cigarette butt, stubbing it out beneath an oversized boot. “Good.”

 

* * *

 

That evening Andrej sits with her at dinner. He is fascinated by Vision, finds Natasha intimidating, and listens as Wanda tells him of each of them. She tells him who they are and what they can do, and, where she knows, how they do what they do. She is not _entirely_ surprised, when Snowsmoke asks about her powers.

“The Chitauri. The aliens that tried to invade New York. Their blood, their tech, the staff that the Asgardian Loki had. They made a virus. Some of the scientists said it would unlock abilities, some thought it would outright give them. Pie--,” her throat chokes, but she forces herself to say the name, “Pietro and I were the only ones to survive. We’re not sure why, even now.”

Andrej huffs a breath, “Isn’t it obvious? You had your vengeance, you had each other, and you’re a witch. That’s how you did it. You’ve just gone from the Church Witch to the Scarlet Witch.”

One eyebrow rises. “I may be a witch, but my brother? Why did he survive do you think?”

Andrej shrugs, and spoons up another load of peas. “ _Because_ he was your brother. He got the magic too, just never did anything with it until the virus. Or maybe because he was your brother and you loved him and you used the start of your own magic to make sure he lived too.” He shrugged one small shoulder. “I don’t know.”

Wanda manages to smile, just a touch. “So you think all witches could survive it then, the virus.”

“Sure, probably. The rest of us aren’t as good as you though, some of us might not manage it entirely. But sure. Those of us already more than we should be. Why wouldn’t we?”

 

* * *

 

It does not entirely surprise Wanda, that Fury heard what Andrej said.

“We ran gene tests on the boy.” His voice is abrupt as always, and Wanda turns. “He has a few significant markers similar to you, and your brother.”

Wanda feels anger and concern and pain all simmer in her stomach. “Are you going to do as they did then? Make people anew without telling them how many might die?”

Fury shakes his head. “No. S.H.I.E.L.D. is not HYDRA. We won’t find the needy and promise them nebulous _maybes_ in exchange for their service.” He shrugs one coated shoulder, and spins about on his heel. “But he has some similar markers. Maybe there is something in the witch thing after all.”

Wanda watches, and says nothing. Fury sits at his desk.

“I’m not asking you to let us do this.” Fury plants his boots on his desk, and his voice and mind are as honest as Wanda has ever known them. “I’m not asking you to mention this to your Snowsmoke, or let us tell him. You’ve lost enough already - your vengeance, your home, your brother. I’m not going to ask you to lose someone else. But I want you to know that we think he could become like you, possibly, and that we have the virus they used.”

Wanda turns on her heel, and leaves the office. She is halfway down the corridor before she realises she is crying.

 

* * *

 

She does not mention it to Snowsmoke. What Fury said was true; she had lost too much to be able to lose any more. In the evening she lets Andrej take the spare bed she’d had moved into her room, and ignores the smell of cigarette smoke for the comfort of someone who understands her.

 

* * *

 

Andrej watches. Andrej learns. The others - teammates and tutors both - don’t question his presence, even after the other Sokovians who came all the way cross the ocean return home. Wanda thinks Vision may have told them, but does not bother wondering.

For all Andrej is intimidated by Natasha he likes her, and lets her teach him how to fight. He picks it up quickly, and asks, some days, to join the training Vision and Wanda and Sam go through, not as an Avenger or as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, but as a child, curious.

The day Wanda’s scarlet leaps to catch him when he falls makes Wanda decide.

 

* * *

 

“Fury said they have the virus.”

Andrej looks up at her, cigarette dangling from between his fingers.

“From what he said I think he wants to know if there is something in what you said about witches, but he won’t do it without permission, or without telling you all the risks. They are not HYDRA.”

Andrej gently stubs out the cigarette, and tucks the remaining half behind his ear. “Do you want me to?”

Wanda shakes her head, “I don’t think there’s anything I could want _less_. It was awful, the virus. Pie--,” she forces herself to finish the word, “Pietro and I both thought we’d die. The others all _did_ die. But I don’t want you unable to defend yourself any more. Not with the witch hunts that will come.”

Andrej is quiet, knots his fingers together and unknots them. “I won’t do it if you don’t want me to. Promise.”

The laugh Wanda gives is half forced and half true. “Do not hold back for my sake, Snowsmoke. Do as you will. I will stay at your side.”

Andrej glances up at her. “Promise?”

Wanda tugs the boy closer, presses a kiss to his hair. “I promise.”

 

* * *

 


	2. Chapter 2

The day Andrej agrees to it, and sits in medical waiting for the injection, Wanda is sat on the bed opposite him, feeling like a coiled spring. She had seen Pietro’s mind like this, stressed, worried, waiting for action, wanting desperately to move, rather than worry in stillness, but she’d not experienced it fully herself. Scarlet dances around her, knots through her hair, and her eyes glow with it. As Andrej lies down on the bed, as the virus goes into him, he reaches his free hand to Wanda.

When she moves close to him his fingers tangle in her hair. “You’ll stay?” he asks, Sokovian, low and quiet. “Witch’s honour?”

Wanda knows the scarlet is in her eyes, and almost wishes it were the honest silver-blue of Pietro’s. “Witch’s honour,” she breathes. “I will stay.”

 

* * *

 

It is three days, and she does not leave his side unless she must. The fourth day Vision comes by, complaining of something he does not understand.

“My head, it... hurts, I think. I’ve not experienced this before.”

Wanda smiles. “A headache. Dr. Cho said she left some medicines in the cupboard, that should work on your body.”

Vision crosses to the cabinet, and finds the curious purple-green pills designed to soothe the pain of vibranium-laced muscles and skin and tissue. He swallows them quickly, with the aid of water, his mouth turning down slightly at the odd motion he’d not had to do before. Then he sits by Wanda, on the bed across from where Andrej is sleeping. He has been feverish these past few days, but eats when he is given food. Wanda cannot feel his ribs when she hugs him goodnight.

They are silent awhile.

“Do you think he will make it?”

“I hope he does.” Wanda’s voice is a breath. “Half died in the first three days, I think. He has done better than half.”

“How long was the fever for you?”

Wanda shrugs a shoulder. “For me, five days. For him, nine.” The tone in her voice tells Vision who the him is. Wanda still cannot say his name without choking, and has been trying workarounds. Sam offered to help her find a therapist, find someone to talk to, but Wanda knows she would not be able to explain this to anyone.

There is silence in the room from them. The lights hum, the air-con softly breathes, the heart-monitor hooked up to Andrej marks his pulse. These, and the muted sound of Andrej’s chest rising and falling is all there is. Vision does not move, seeming to revel in the quiet.

“Will you stay for a while?” Wanda’s question disturbs the silence, but Vision nods. “Do you mind staying?” and Wanda’s question is almost an afterthought.

“I do not mind.” The android’s voice is soft and warm. “The, ah, headache was getting less the closer I came to here. I think the virus may still be linked to…,” he trails off, and gestures to the stone on his brow.

Wanda nods. “That makes sense. Do you mind that?”

The android shrugs. “It is not your fault, or mine. It just is. I see no reason to mind it.”

The placid response reminds Wanda of her brother’s mind, when he had made up his mind to do nothing but stay at Wanda’s side; a calm and perfect certainty, of nothing but honesty.

 

* * *

 

They are still sat beside each other at eleven at night, when the heart monitor flatlines.

Vision flies, immediately to it, then reaches _into_ Andrej’s chest, and starts to pulse his heart. Wanda stands on the other side of the boy, scarlet dancing from her hands, to his lungs, to his mind, maintaining them as best she is able. His mind is still dancing, grey and cream and white and ivory, and she lashes together a bond, a looser version of the one she had made to her brother’s. _Snowsmoke!_ she calls, and hears a faint reply. _Hold on. We will help you, but you **must** hold on._

Wanda closes her eyes. She guides the neurons in his brain to stay alive, she guides air into and out of his lungs, and feels the layer and layer and overlaying of Vision’s hand around Andrej’s heart, forcing life to continue. There is concern on the android’s face, and Wanda lashes together another rapid bridge, aiming for the stone on his brow. Golden light fills her mind, and the warm wise face of patience. _We can do this_ , is all he says, and Wanda nods. With three more careful pulses of his hand, Vision pulls it free of Andrej’s chest. Wanda withdraws her magic, scarlet returning, humming, under her skin, bond to Vision falling loose, bond to the boy on the bed remaining.

And Andrej heaves a breath of his own.

 

* * *

 

They sit again, on the bed across from Andrej. Wanda has been a day already without sleep, but knows she cannot rest now. Some distant part of her mind wonders at the lack of blood, the lack of gore, on Vision’s hands, but the rest of her is peering down the gold and grey cobweb bridge to Andrej’s mind. Icicles sing in a wind, at his end, and Wanda finds her mental choir matching their harmonies.

Beside her Vision’s fingers rise to the stone on his brow, and fall. “When you… you went _through_ the stone. How...?”

“It is the focus,” Wanda says. “Of your powers, and of mine, and Andrej’s, and his. I thought it was best, to link us three together with the stone. Did you mind?”

Vision shakes his head. “Will you remake it? I have not… the stone was just destruction to me, a way I could destroy Ultron’s bodies. For it to help, it’s. I.” Wanda smiles at the android, and lets scarlet tint her fingertips.

“Let me,” is all she says. Her fingers skim the surface of the yellow stone, and turn it golden. She feels a momentary shock from it, as though her mind’s stretch has increased, before it is gone. The bond to Vision’s mind is scarlet and magenta, burgundy in the middle, and chased through with gold. It is stronger than the cobweb link to Andrej’s, though she is not sure if that is because Vision is awake, or because he has the stone.

Vision stares at nothingness, his mouth slightly open. There is the sound of the heart monitor, the hum of the light, the soft breath of the air-con, and Andrej’s chest rising and falling. Neither speak.

_ This is beautiful _ .

Wanda smiles. _It is nothing_. In the privacy of her own mind she pulls up memories of the bond she had strung between her mind and her brother’s. Silver and gold, scarlet and blue, a dancing, shining glory of love and trust and power. She mourns it, as deeply as she mourns her brother, and she knows she will never have its like again.

 

* * *

 

It is a day more before Andrej wakes. A round five days like Wanda’s. His fever is faded, and the virus is gone. His DNA has changed slightly, when the gene test comes back, but he retains the gene markers that matched Wanda’s and Pietro’s. They do not know, yet, what he can do, and the medics are displeased when Wanda suggests they let him leave medical.

“We didn’t show our gifts for days,” Wanda argues. “Why should Snowsmoke be any different?”

It takes an especially loud yell from the argument for Vision to drag the director down, and Fury resolves it. 

“The kid stays with Maximoff. Maximoff, Vision, if you see the kid do anything new you tell us. Everyone clear?”

There is some grumbling, but everyone nods, and Wanda scoops an exhausted Snowsmoke into her arms, and carries him back to her room. Andrej’s head nestles against Wanda’s shoulder. Vision pads along behind them, behind Wanda’s left shoulder, and his mind offers the gentlest goodnight Wanda has ever perceived.

 

* * *

 

Wanda does not sleep. She has lost track of how long she has gone without sleep, but does not particularly care to know. Seeing Snowsmoke sleeping - the last traces of fever-sweat on his brow, pale hair, curled small - remind her all too much of how she waited those last four days at her brother’s bedside, waiting for him to wake too. She wonders, slightly, if there may have been truth in Andrej’s other theory; that her brother had survived because she loved him and would have poured all her newfound power into it. She knows it was not a dissimilar feeling that drove her to twist her power into saving Andrej.

Her hand ghosts over his brow, knuckles dusting through his hair, and he sleeps still. His chest rises and falls, the blanket she placed over him moves too, and his mind turns, like snow in a gentle wind, as he sleeps. Wanda settles on her bed, and leans against the wall, and watches Snowsmoke sleep.

 

* * *

 

It is cold come morning, when Wanda wakes. She did not notice how she had dozed off, but dozed off she had, her head sinking to her chest, her hands fisted in her blankets. Around her wrist Pietro’s scarf is still tied, and she looses it, carefully, and wraps it about her neck. When she breathes deeply she can still smell him, and it almost makes her weep. In the other bed Andrej sleeps peacefully, breath misting before him, fingertips twitching at the cold, but not yet gone blue. Wanda rises, pulls a blanket from her bed, rich red and scarlet, and tucks it around him.

 

* * *

 

Vision comes by, shortly before Andrej wakes. He is blinking as he walks in, the tiny lenses in his eyes setting and resetting. His fingers knock at the door, and when it swings open with Wanda’s scarlet he rests his hand on the doorframe.

“It is colder here. Would you like me to turn the heating up?”

Wanda shakes her head. “We have blankets. We will be fine.”

“How is he?” The android’s voice holds nothing but concern, and even his mind is dancing with the swirling, shimmering, grey-green-gold of worry.

“Resting. He is resting.” Wanda’s eyes watch Andrej, curled into his pillow. At some point he moved from lying on his back to lying on his belly, his face turned toward Wanda, one hand curled a short inch from his nose. White-blond hair lies splayed on his pillow, over his face, over his blankets, looking like loops of fine silken wire, or watered silk like metal.

They are both silent a while. Wanda knows she looks exhausted; the sleep she managed last night was not nearly enough for how long she had been awake. Vision watches Andrej quietly, and Wanda can hear his mind humming, silver, green and burgundy, in curiosity and study. When she reaches down the echo of the bond she had made she sees more clearly, watches him count and calculate breathing and pulse and heart rate. Wanda shifts to one side of her bed, and pulls the pillow onto her lap. With one hand she gestures at the space she made.

The android’s brows rise. “May I?”

Wanda nods, and Vision is silent as he crosses the floor, and settles beside Wanda on the bed. They are quiet, just the sounds of their breathing and Andrej’s. Vision’s voice is soft.

“Do you have any ideas as to what he may be able to do?”

Wanda shrugs. “Some. The Doctor had ideas for P-,” she stutters the first but continues, “Pietro’s and mine, but wasn’t right. This,” she gestures, to herself, to Andrej, and vaguely outside, toward her brother’s grave, “it cannot be predicted. It is not just what makes us who we are, but what we think anchors us to being human. P- my brother valued himself as my twin, as my protector, as the one who knew the streets, and how to find safety. I valued myself as my brother’s twin, as Andrej’s friend, as one who knew how to help people and ally them to us and make them fear us. I don’t know, yet, what Andrej thinks anchors himself to humanity more than anything.”

The mumble that comes from Andrej is quiet, Wanda thinks at first that it may be a bubble of thought rather than speech, before the boy pushes himself up. “Snowsmoke,” he says again. “That makes me human. To your brother I was information, to the others I was the alley witch. To you I’m Snowsmoke. A person. That’s what anchors me to human.” The boy grins, yellow teeth against white skin. “That and cigarettes.”

Vision looks concerned, Wanda smiles, and a small carton of cigarettes is thrown across the room to Snowsmoke.

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave comments!


	3. Chapter 3

On the first day there is nothing new. Wherever Snowsmoke goes there is a slight chill in the air, and a muffled quiet, but they have grown used to the coolness some of the agents show the boy. They do not like it, that there is this stranger amongst them, allowed to stay by the word of one who once fought them. The Captain has spoken to them on it, even Fury had, but still the displeasure remained. They did not like the presence of the strange boy, vouched for only by the word of one once an enemy, and that he had taken the virus, and survived, meant they only liked him less.

Now that Andrej is well enough to walk on his own, to leave medical, the looks some of the techs and agents give him worry Wanda. Andrej stands to Wanda’s left, slightly in front of her, and Vision follows behind. Occasionally Wanda’s arm reaches out, and pulls Andrej back to her, when some of the more cruel agents pass close by, but Vision’s hovering presence deters most.

It is a week before they notice how close the cold follows him, and the frosted ferns he sends dancing along the walls his fingers touch.

 

* * *

 

“Snowsmoke,” Wanda says. “It really is what you are.” She is smiling and cannot seem to stop. Her hand dances scarlet through Andrej's silver hair. His hair crackles slightly under her touch, like grass coated with frost. His mind is dancing, more like a snowstorm than ever, frost and snow coating everything so he shines bright and clear, like a beacon.

Vision is watching carefully, as though he does not quite know what to do with one who has a new-grown power. Wanda simply smiles, and tugs Andrej’s hand gently. After a moment Vision follows on, and they ascend to Fury’s office.

 

* * *

 

Later Vision talks to Wanda.

“I couldn’t feel it anymore,” he says. “The tugging from the stone. It just seemed to end when he started using the ice when he chose, like his awareness severed it from the stone completely.”

Wanda shrugs. “Aren’t you pleased? I thought it would be annoying, if it tugged always?”

Vision shakes his head, shrugs, nods. “I don’t know. But it feels odd, now that it is gone.”

Wanda smiles, and reaches out a hand to gently touch the skin of Vision’s brow, just beside the stone. “At least,” she says, “You were not there when my brother and I gained our gifts. It took us quite a while to even notice ours. You would have had the tugging much longer.” She laughs, just a moment. “That, I think, might have made you hate us.”

Vision’s smile is genuine when he looks past Wanda’s hand to her face. “I do not think I am capable of hate.”

 

* * *

 

Andrej’s training progresses rapidly. Wanda remembers her own, asked to do things when she didn’t even know how, and remembered the visualisations which helped her. Letting her subconscious paint the image of her cathedral, of her brother’s liana-strewn tree, letting her mind find the dancing skein of scarlet that floated over each candelabra. Wanda reaches, gently, into Andrej’s mind, and helps him find what of the ice is _his_.

 

* * *

 

The first time he manages to freeze a cup of boiling water, he also freezes the room. With his gust of laughter comes swirling flakes of snow, and Wanda’s scarlet dances amongst them, warming the room.

“Don’t,” murmurs Andrej, and Wanda frowns. “Cold feels right. Warm… It’s ok but I don’t like it. Leave me cold?”

Wanda nods, and presses a light kiss to his frosted hair, “Alright, Snowsmoke.”

 

* * *

 

Sometimes Vision watches, as Wanda tries to teach Andrej to control his gifts. He does not understand, not as Wanda does, the instinctive nature of their gifts, but seems to gain some peace from watching. The wrinkles in his brow ease each time Wanda’s recommendations aid Andrej, and, sometimes, he stretches out a cool magenta finger to catch a falling flake of snow.

The Widow watches only rarely. When the snow falls too strongly she watches the thick layer of it as though she expects it to be marred in some way, with footsteps, with blood, or made invisible by a blizzard. When Clint watches he ends up wrapped in coat after coat, his fingers tucked into his armpits so they don’t freeze. Occasionally Cap or Sam or Colonel Rhodes drop in, and, once, Fury does. None have anything to say, or anything to add to Wanda’s teaching when they see the snow swirling down in the small room.

 

* * *

 

Some days Andrej is too tired to make much snow. Those days the blizzard and snow and ice of his mind… doesn’t fade. It recedes. Ice is caught in sunlight, snow shines bright under a rich blue sky, and, for a moment, Wanda can almost believe the colours to be her brother’s.

Andrej is quiet those days, and peaceful in a way Pietro never was. Wanda remembers Pietro’s mind with crystal clarity, how, even when settled and waiting, there was something moving, something waiting, just beyond the dancing dervish at the edge of his mind. Even when he was peaceful, even when he was calm, something was moving. Something was ready. Andrej’s mind is not. His mind spreads out like the sun and the snow are all he needs, as though he will hear each footstep crunching over the snow of his mind, as though he can hear the dropping water from each and every icicle.

One day Wanda crunches across the snowy field of his mind, to sit beside him in the snow. His mind is not cold, despite the ice everywhere, the snow is as soft as down when she settles to sit. When she leans back to watch the sky the hand of Andrej’s thoughtform takes hers gently.  They rest like that, Wanda tethered back to her own mind by a single scarlet thread, and watch the bright blue sky of Andrej’s.

 

* * *

 

“Do you ever go into our minds?” Natasha’s question is sharp, but not entirely rude. Wanda shakes her head.

“Not without warning. Even the fear-dreams, on the ship, I sent my scarlet to do that, I did not plan it precisely myself.” Natasha looks almost doubtful and Wanda continues. “I have been inside Andrej’s, because he trusts me, and I had a bond to my brother that only ended when he- when he d--.” Natasha’s hand touches Wanda’s lightly.

“I believe you.”

Wanda’s laugh is choked out. “Why did you ask?”

Natasha shrugs. “Vision said your mind seems better when it’s in other people’s. I wanted to know if you’ve been playing with anyone’s.”

“I haven’t. I promise.” Natasha, Wanda knows, is someone who even in the midst of fear is deadly, and she dares not anger her. “Andrej’s mind, and sometimes I have a link to Vision’s. No one else. I don’t…,” Wanda pauses, finds her words. “I don’t go into people’s minds much. It feels wrong. My brother’s mind was safe. Andrej trusts me. But other minds I do not know, and I do not wish to explore them. My scarlet is smart enough to work without sight besides.”

Natasha’s expression is oddly pensive as she nods, and Wanda leaves.

 

* * *

 

Andrej sleeps deeply after training, and chills the room with snowy breaths. He’s asked for a new room, Wanda knows, but it’s taking time for S.H.I.E.L.D. to get things together for it despite their new growth. Wanda is quiet in the evenings, when she sits there, but sometimes even her blankets and shawls are not quite enough against the accidental cold of Andrej and she goes a-wandering.

The base is large, Wanda knows, and she has spent many nights in the garages filled with cars and vans and huge hummers. She knows the labs, when she has tripped through them carefully, after making sure Stark wasn’t there. She knows the grounds, she knows the gyms, she knows the cafeteria and kitchens, and it has reached a point that she just wanders rather than exploring.

One night Vision joins her.

 

* * *

 

“Can you not sleep, Miss Maximoff?”

Wanda is standing at the edge of the roof, her toes about an inch from the edge, her scarlet dancing around her to keep her from being buffeted off by the wind. Her shawl is wrapped tight around her, her hair dances in the breeze, but she looks untouched by the cold. Vision supposes, after a moment, that, given her training of Andrej, the wind outside is probably warm in comparison. Wanda doesn’t respond.

Vision tries Sokovian. “Miss Maximoff?”

Wanda shudders as though surprised, and turns to look at him. “No. The room was too cold. Andrej breathes out snow after training and blankets and shawls only do so much.”

Vision steps forward, steps to stand with her at the edge of the roof. “You could use my room, if you like? I do not need it particularly. I don’t exactly sleep like humans do.” Wanda blinks, and smiles slightly.

“Sometimes I forget you are not human. Thor stood out in his difference, but you… I think you are more human than many humans.” She snorts, and smiles wider, “Certainly more human than me.”

Vision frowns, but his tone is frank, “I think you are perfectly human, Wanda.”

Wanda laughs, voice dry and mocking. “I gave up my humanity and very nearly my life for a vengeance I’ve since given up on. I lost my brother, my twin, half of me, and tore out Ultron’s heart in recompense. I am half a human, at best, and even there I am riddled through with holes from the virus, and the bullets that took my brother from me.” She shakes her head, and her scarlet dances close around her hands. “No, Vision, I am not human anymore I think.”

There is a pensive silence before Vision speaks. “There is more to being human than what you have given up or taken, I think.” He pauses, lets the wind whistle past them, and continues. “And even then is that not the nature of humanity? To give things up for what you believe in, to take things because you chose to, to fight to live, to live to learn? Are they not all human things?”

Wanda looks at her feet, and Vision cannot see her face quite clearly enough, but he thinks she smiles.

**Finis**

 

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are, as ever, appreciated, loved and cherished!

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are very much appreciated!


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